2008 Woodie Awards
Locals cool to belt rule
Olivia Moran - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 11/27/07 Section: Metro
- Page 1 of 1
Local officials seem unwilling to commit to a recent proposal from the Bush administration to equip all short school buses with shoulder seat belts.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters took a bus ride with children in Raleigh, N.C., on Nov. 19, where she proposed additional ideas including increasing the height of seat backs by four inches and providing federal standards for districts that may decide to put lap belts in long buses.
Mark Thompson, an area manager for Durham School Services - a school-bus company whose services extend to the Iowa City School District - said one of the major issues with the proposal would be cost, although he could not give an estimate as to how much it would take to equip all 120 school buses in the local district.
The proposal did not promise any additional funding but did say it would allow districts to use federal highway-safety funds to pay for the project, according to a press release.
Thompson said he cannot fully give a positive opinion about the proposal "without any scientific data that would say this is going to save lives."
School District safety coordinator Bob Porter agreed.
"There's really not enough conclusive evidence one way or the other," he said.
In a statement last week, Peters said the seat belts would make kids safer and put parents at ease.
Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, however, say fewer than eight passengers die each year in school-bus-related accidents. That number is in relation to the 474,000 school buses nationally that annually travel 4.8 billion miles, carrying 25.1 million children.
"When you look at the overall safety record of the industry, it's pretty darn good," Thompson said.
If the seat-belt rule were to go into effect, all new small buses would be required to have shoulder seat belts within three years. After only one year in existence, all seat backs in new buses would have 24-inch backs instead of the usual 20 inches.
So far, Texas and California are the only two states that require shoulder seat belts in all new school buses.
Porter said he knows of two other states that require some sort of seat belt but said there haven't been nearly enough incidents in those two states to form a pro-belt argument.
He said that although seat belts have shown to reduce some accidents, they can actually contribute to injuries in younger children. And younger children are more likely to wear a seat belt than the older ones, he said.
Thompson said the idea is something each individual school district would have to evaluate.
"I think that on the big buses - regarding the secretary's proposal - it's things already being done," he said.
E-mail DI reporter Olivia Moran at:
olivia-moran@uiowa.edu
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters took a bus ride with children in Raleigh, N.C., on Nov. 19, where she proposed additional ideas including increasing the height of seat backs by four inches and providing federal standards for districts that may decide to put lap belts in long buses.
Mark Thompson, an area manager for Durham School Services - a school-bus company whose services extend to the Iowa City School District - said one of the major issues with the proposal would be cost, although he could not give an estimate as to how much it would take to equip all 120 school buses in the local district.
The proposal did not promise any additional funding but did say it would allow districts to use federal highway-safety funds to pay for the project, according to a press release.
Thompson said he cannot fully give a positive opinion about the proposal "without any scientific data that would say this is going to save lives."
School District safety coordinator Bob Porter agreed.
"There's really not enough conclusive evidence one way or the other," he said.
In a statement last week, Peters said the seat belts would make kids safer and put parents at ease.
Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, however, say fewer than eight passengers die each year in school-bus-related accidents. That number is in relation to the 474,000 school buses nationally that annually travel 4.8 billion miles, carrying 25.1 million children.
"When you look at the overall safety record of the industry, it's pretty darn good," Thompson said.
If the seat-belt rule were to go into effect, all new small buses would be required to have shoulder seat belts within three years. After only one year in existence, all seat backs in new buses would have 24-inch backs instead of the usual 20 inches.
So far, Texas and California are the only two states that require shoulder seat belts in all new school buses.
Porter said he knows of two other states that require some sort of seat belt but said there haven't been nearly enough incidents in those two states to form a pro-belt argument.
He said that although seat belts have shown to reduce some accidents, they can actually contribute to injuries in younger children. And younger children are more likely to wear a seat belt than the older ones, he said.
Thompson said the idea is something each individual school district would have to evaluate.
"I think that on the big buses - regarding the secretary's proposal - it's things already being done," he said.
E-mail DI reporter Olivia Moran at:
olivia-moran@uiowa.edu
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Joe
posted 11/27/07 @ 2:27 PM CST
And how many students are actually hurt on School buses because they were not wearing a seat belt. They don't move very fast...and how are they planning on making sure that students wear them. (Continued…)
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